Page:The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage.djvu/78

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SUFFRAGIST ARGUMENTS
75

to his notice, imperil the fortunes of his undertaking by giving to his workmen shares and a vote in the management.

Moreover, he would perhaps regard it as a little suspect if a group of those who were claiming this as a right came and told him that "it was very selfish of him" not to grant their request.

Precious above rubies to the suffragist and every other woman who wants to apply the screw to man is that word selfish. It furnishes her with the petitio principii that man is under an ethical obligation to give anything she chooses to ask. We come next—and this is the last of all the arguments we have to consider—to the argument that the suffrage ought to be given to woman for instructional purposes.

Now it would be futile to attempt to deny that we have ready to hand in the politics of the British Empire—that Empire which is swept along in "the too vast orb of her fate"—an ideal political training-ground in which we might